Why is coronavirus death toll lower in South Korea than in other countries?

January 20th - it was the day that South Korea and the US almost simultaneously announced the first coronavirus case. About six weeks have passed since then, and nearly 1,500 lab tests for coronavirus were performed in the US, and nearly 140,000 in South Korea.

About 10,000 coronavirus tests are done daily in South Korea, and over 6,700 patients have already been diagnosed with the coronavirus. However, the mortality from coronavirus was 0.6% - much lower than in China or in the US.

According to WHO, the death rate from coronavirus in the world is about 3.4%. Some experts, however, argued that if the number of diagnosed cases would increase, the mortality rate would decrease.

If many tests for coronavirus are performed, many mild cases will also be diagnosed with no complications.

For the same reason, mortality in the US seems so high - about 5% of patients diagnosed with coronavirus die there. But this can be explained by the fact that the analysis for coronavirus there is done only for those who have severe symptoms, therefore, statistics are based only on severe cases - excluding lungs.

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